Tuesday 6 November 2012

Stuck at Stage Three

 A short piece on the radio this morning in reaction to this article about Maurice Saatchi had me furiously nodding my head in agreement. Actual air-punching would have been inappropriate, as the discussion was about grief. Specifically, about how you don't 'get over it' or 'move on'. You learn to live with it, but one of the great lies about the seven stages of grief is that everyone moves through them to arrive at 'acceptance'. Me, I'm pretty much still going with anger (stage three, apparently). And you know what? That's okay. I'm okay.

It's nineteen years since my mother died, followed by my father less than a year later. I was in my mid-twenties, newly-married, younger than I knew. Raw grief is a devilishly difficult emotion to live with. It takes your guts and twists them so you can barely stand. It fills your head with the incomprehensible that makes your brain buck and reel away from believing something that Just Cannot Be. And that's when you cry - you howl out loud so you can't hear the howling in your head.

But you can't live like that for long - it's exhausting and debilitating. So you learn to quiet that part of your mind, you fill your time with the relentless stuff of life that insists on being attended to, even when all you want to do is live under your duvet. Until you appear almost normal again. But you have a secret, a dirty little secret - the grief is still there. Always there.

It doesn't take much, nearly two decades later, to bring my grief back to the fore. I'm not good with funerals, either real or fictional. An unexpected glimpse of my father in a family video, a photograph of my mother that I haven't seen before spied on a mantlepiece, the opening bars of the Schubert Cello Quintet in C Major that I played over and over at a deafening volume on the day I heard that my mother's illness was terminal, these things remind me that I haven't 'dealt' with my grief, if dealing with it means neutralising it. I still feel it, and what I mostly feel, still, is angry at the unfairness of it all. But anger is not a productive emotion, so I feel it, and then I put it away.

It's not something I talk about much these days, partly because I don't think people want to hear that it never goes away, that the 'seven stages of grief' are a fallacy. So I was pleased to hear Matthew Parris talking on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning about how he still grieves for his father five years after his death, and how he thinks that is perfectly okay. To paraphrase, he said that when someone you love dies, they leave a space that cannot be filled, and that's as it should be. I couldn't agree more. Sometimes you have to look into the hole, into the blackness, acknowledge it, give it the respect it deserves, then continue your life walking around its edges.


Thursday 25 October 2012

Something in the Ether

This is a slightly unusual blog post for me as it is about self-promotion. But bear with me, I hope you'll find it's worth it.

I started this year determined not just to write more, but to get that writing out into the world. One of my best discoveries has been the Ether app on the iPhone. Ether specialise in quick reads and have a mix of free and paid downloads. They curate all the content - this is not self-publishing. So if you pay for a story on the app, you know you'll get something good. Even better, we writers get a cut of the download fees too. I have six stories on the app now and am really happy to reach be reaching a new audience. In many ways, writers are taking back the means of distribution for the work in this new digital age - there is as much opportunity as there is threat and we have to get out there and sell our wares.

So...

For one week only, Ether are running a Halloween competition - there are sixty new halloween-themed stories on the app and they are all free to download. Now, here comes the pitch: the writer that gets their story downloaded the most between now and Halloween wins a rather splendid prize. And I would like to be that writer. So, if you haven't discovered the Ether app yet, go to www.etherbooks.com or search for Ether Books in the App Store. Then download this:


And while you're at it, have a look at some my other stories. Oh, okay, there are other good writers on the app too (anyone heard of Hilary Mantel?)

Scan this QR code on your iPhone for a shortcut to the Ether app:


Monday 26 March 2012

My war with books, or how I have come to love my Kindle

Do you have a favourite book? I'm not talking about the content here, but the actual thing. The cover, the pages, the feel and heft of the thing. My favourite book (the physical thing) happens to also be my favourite book (the words bit). It is a 1952 Collins hardback edition of Pride and Prejudice that belonged to my father. It's a slim volume, just the right size to hold and carry. It is bound in blue cloth, the spine now faded to grey and the cover mottled with water marks and embedded chocolate crumbs (because reading and chocolate go together like Fred and Ginger). The pages are thin but creamily sturdy and the print stands just a little proud of paper - I like to run my fingers down the age-rippled pages and feel the words. Properly stitch-bound, the pages are as secure now as the day the book was made, and fall open easily, allowing me to hold the book comfortably in one hand (the other hand being needed for eating chocolate, obviously).

This is one of many books I purloined from my parents' shelves. I grew up in a house full of books. Novels, picture books, reference books for all the hobbies and distractions my father indulged in instead of writing, cookery books, how-to book, and a gorgeous, glorious collection of Folio Society books that I happily inherited (and continue to add to). However, I don't remember my parents buying books (apart from the Folios). Most of the novels, plays and books of poetry were bought individually by my parents before they were married. Books after marriage, with a mortgage and a family, were a luxury. We got fiction books as presents. The reference books came in as piece-works, paid for bit-by-bit, or as part of special offers from the Readers' Digest. Voracious readers as we were, books were borrowed, not bought.

We were luck enough to have the Lisburn Road Library no more than five minutes from our house. Converted from a large Victorian villa and with a huge Monkey Puzzle tree outside, it was a home-from-home - two floors of books, a whole room of children's books. Long walls just crammed, end-to-end, floor-to-ceiling, with books. I still dream quite regularly that I am in that library, looking for a book. We visited the library probably every other week, and when my mother had read all the books the Northern Ireland Library Service had to offer, she joined the private Linen Hall Library and started working her way through their slightly loftier collections as well. The last time I visited my local library here in SE23, in another fine Victorian building, I kept looking for other rooms, the rooms where the books must be. I never found them

As readers, I don't think my family did much to economically support writers. Buying books was a luxury - and wasteful, because a lifetime is too short to read all the books out there. Who has time to re-read a book? Only the very best, the favourites, were bought. A bad book (by which I mean a badly written book) is a waste of time and paper. If you borrow a book and you don't like it, no harm done. If you buy a book and you don't like it, it sits there on your shelf, mocking you, because it is a Book, and Books are Sacred Things, so you can't just throw it away, much as you'd love to.

I didn't start buying books until I was earning my own money (or living off my husband's) and had bookshelves of my own. Books became cheaper, both relative to my income, and as book price-fixing by publishers was abolished in the 1990s. Over the years, I have acquired many, many books that I have read once and will never read again. I give a lot away to charity, but there are still books under the bed, and double-shelved in the guest room. And I resent it. Some of them are Very Bad Books Indeed. All of them collect dust. I don't want them any more.

Which is why I love my Kindle. I know as a writer I should be concerned about electronic books - about protecting my intellectual property and getting paid for it. But as a reader, my Kindle frees me up to try all sorts of different books. If I don't like it, I delete it. Gone. Poof. If I really love it, I go out and buy the book. I would rather buy an e-book version of a book than borrow the real book from a friend, and I have added e-book versions of my old favourites to my Kindle, so in those ways I have paid the author twice. I have become a much more experimental reader since I got my Kindle - it's like having  the Lisburn Road Library in my pocket.

And best of all, when I am reading Julian Barnes, I can click on the words I don't understand and look them up in the dictionary. I hated Barnes' Booker winning book, but boy did I expand my vocabulary.

Monday 25 April 2011

How does my garden grow?

 My name is Rachael and I am a garden bore. There. I've said it. I love my garden. I love getting dirt under my fingernails and leaves in my hair. I carefully pick up freshly dug worms and put them back in the soil, tossing the odd one to the robin who always appears as soon as I have a spade or fork in my hand. From April to October, I have to spend at least five minutes every day checking what's blooming, what's fading and what's downright surprising.

What's most surprising is that I have become a gardener at all. I used to be the girl that not only killed all her own house plants, but also transferred the kiss of death to any plant I bought as a gift. The first two gardens we owned I viewed with suspicion and tried to keep under control, but no more than that. When a Japanese Maple tree started throwing up suckers in the grass and then, even worse, under our kitchen floor in our last house, all my suspicions were confirmed - nature was the enemy.

All that changed when we bought our current, beloved, house. It came with a mature and extremely well-loved garden. On our second viewing, the then owner, Angela, made coffee and confided that they had just turned down an asking-price offer on the house from a man who wanted to dig up the lawn and put in a swimming pool. When we moved in, the neighbours told me how Angela would stand on the terrace every morning with a cup of coffee, just looking at the garden. I felt an immediate responsibility. This garden I had to look after.

As it turned out, in the first few years there wasn't much to do except keep things ticking over. With a toddler and then a new baby, I was glad to let the garden do its own thing. Every year things grew, things flowered. Throughout the summer the garden was filled with colour - purple and pink hardy geraniums, sky blue lupins, sweet lavenders, blousey pink roses, creamy-white and fragrant mock orange. The pear tree dripped with big-bottomed fruit. The cherry tree flowered twice a year, spotting the tips of its brittle branches with puffs of blossom. I watered and feed and tidied and continued to think of it as Angela's garden.

I knew when we decided to moved to New York for a few years that leaving the garden would be hard. One warm sunny day in early-June, we sat on the patio eating take-out chicken and thinking just how beautiful it was, while the men inside packed up the house and the children ran around on the grass. It seemed cruel that we had to leave just when the garden was at its very best, but leave we did.

We returned three years later to one of the worst summers in London for many a year. Cold and wet. The tenants had moved out six weeks previously and the grass was knee-deep. Three trees had been lost to the January storms earlier in the year. But, much worse, the ivy had run amok. It covered the deep flower beds, all but meeting the grass. It had grown right over the top of the pear and apple trees, and even the tall cherry tree was bowed under the weight of an ivy canopy. The letting agents argued that this had all happened within the six weeks the property had been empty. I knew this was three years of neglect.

I cleared as much of the ivy as I could, rediscovering the old paths and border boundaries, pulling and teasing lengths and lengths of the stuff out of the trees. For every foot of ivy there were two of bramble, lashing cuts up and down my arms. There is only so much one small woman with a pair of secateurs can do and the final hacking back took two men and a chainsaw the best part of a day.

And then we waited. And waited. Surely some of the old perennials were still alive under there? The hardy geraniums earned their name and dutifully came back. A nameless silvery shrub thrust out soft spears of purple flowers - it may be a Salvia, I'm still not sure. The evergreen Euonymus shrubs still marched down the shady side of the garden.  A woody rosemary bush was alive but in danger of being pushed out by one of the many ant hills. Little else survived.

Angela's garden had gone and I had never taken the time to find out what all those wonderful plants were. So I started again. It's taken me three years, but I now know (more or less) what I have in my garden. As I sit here in late April, I can see bluebells and grape hyacinths, just passing their prime. The hardy geraniums are lush with leaf and in a few weeks will be smothered with both flowers and busy-bottomed honey bees. The lime green leaves and stems of purple alliums stud the length of the beds, some already in full bloom, others with their buds still closed in tight green bullets. Self-seeding aquilegias are already sporting their pretty pink bonnets and the sea holly and hostas are in full leaf, with the promise of colour to come. The wisteria is dropping its pale purple confetti on the lawn with every gentle breeze. From behind me comes the thick scent of lilacs, shortly to be replaced by the equally lovely fragrance of the mock orange tree.

And, happily, after years of hiding and sulking, some of Angela's plants have come back. There is a peony I forgot we had that has suddenly come into leaf. The smaller trees have recovered from their tussle with the ivy, and the firethorn tree is especially grateful for its release, with blossom in the spring and masses of hot red berries in the autumn and winter. The roses and flowering shrubs that had become woody and barren have been hard pruned and fed and left be and are now happily flowering again. Last year, a small grey nub of a stub that I decided against digging out for no better reason than laziness suddenly sprouted new branches, then leaves, then beautiful white flowers with blood-red hearts. It's a hibiscus. The ants have been evicted and the rosemary bush is happy. Even the hostas have been spared by the slugs this year, possibly because some hedgehogs have moved in and they love a nice juicy slug.

I don't kill things anymore, I grow them. A garden, a family, a home. All built on solid foundations and thriving.

Friday 4 March 2011

The love of a child

When I was very little, the person I loved most in the world was Nanny. Nanny wasn't a proper fancy nanny, she was my Grandma Smyth's next door neighbour and she used to look after me and do a little light housework for my mother. I don't know where my mother was - I can only assume she had a job. My mother was a remote figure in my early years, but I remember Nanny very well.

Nanny used to bring me red grapes because they were the only type of fruit I would eat. When I had one of my frequent ear-aches, she would pack my ear with cotton-wool and let me rest my head in her lap. When Nanny babysat for me in the evenings, she would run me a deep, warm bubble bath and let me play in it until the water went cold. Then she would bring me downstairs and set me in front of the old fan heater, which she used in lieu of a hairdryer. I would sit with my back to the heater and she would gently brush my thick, thick hair until it had dried, smooth and glossy and so blond it was almost white. Sometimes I stayed the night at Nanny's house. She would feed me sausages and  baked beans that came from the same tin, and raspberry ripple ice-cream. In the house next door, my grandparents would be sitting either side of the fireplace smoking unfiltered Gallaher's cigarettes and not talking. Nanny was the warm, loving constant in my life.


And then, one day, Nanny told me that she was going away and was never coming back. She was going to live in a place called New Zealand that was so far away, she would probably never come back to Belfast again. She was going to live with her daughter. I begged her not to go. I cried and cried. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from beneath my little feet, my life turned upside down. When she was gone, I thought my heart would break. I didn't know it at the time, but I recognise now what that feeling was: it was grief.


Suddenly my mother and I were thrown together. I didn't care for her cooking - she never did things the way Nanny did. When she ran me a bath, she only filled it a few inches, and with tepid water. She neglected to brush my hair after it had been washed, with the result that it became as matted as a bird's nest. She would roughly brush the front of it, leave a heaving mass of tats at the back. She never bought red grapes or raspberry ripple ice-cream.


Gradually I got over my grief at losing Nanny and my mother and I became closer, although it took many years. I have often wondered what was going on with her during my early years. She was a naturally warm and loving person, but I don't remember much of that being directed my way back then. I wonder was she depressed, post-natally or otherwise? Did she find it hard having a baby in the house again, when my sister and brother were older and already at school? Did she find she only had enough mothering in her for two and there was just nothing left for me? And is that why I was so sure I didn't want another child after The Boy was born? I never want a child of mine to feel like an also-ran, an after-thought, an inconvenience.


I'll never get to ask my mother now, and even if she were still alive, I'm not sure I'd know how to ask. But for all the love I feel I missed out on then, there was much love from her later, so much so that when my mother died, the grief I felt then outstripped any I felt before, or have since. Turns out there is always enough love to go around.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Rock and troll

Am I the only middle-class London mother to have never been on Mumsnet? I was tempted to take a look around the time of the General Election, when the talk was all about the party leaders' favourite biscuits. I wanted to know how such stuff gets to be news. I understand why the politicians did it (they were courting the female floating vote). But why have the media suddenly decided that Mums are important, powerful, taste-makers, arbiters of justice and imbued with some sort of special every-woman wisdom?

I might find the answer to these questions if I just went and had a look at the website, but I really don't want to. I've dipped my toe in the online forum world over the past year and, with a few notable exceptions, I've pulled my toe right back out again.

Here are the exceptions: I use my local forums to get dull but essential information (roadworks, train cancellations, local campaigns). I am a member of a writing forum that is supportive, engaging and informative, and blessedly troll-free. And that's about it. On the local forums, there are places for people to discuss 'wider issues'. It hasn't taken me long to realise that I'm not really interested in the opinions of people I don't know, much less getting into an argument with them. And it almost always does degenerate into an argument. There is an inverse proportion between the length of a discussion thread and the quality of its content. Once a general discussion has reached its second or third page, I can almost guarantee that the conversation will have boiled down to 'You are a racist.' 'No, you are.' 'No, you are.' Ultimately, it all: Me, me me!

The thing is, no matter how reasonable or even-handed you try to be, no one is going to change their opinions because of what you write on a forum. And no-one actually cares what you think, they just want to say what they think (and I'm as guilty of that as anyone, see above). And whatever you say can be twisted in any direction by people who are Professional Offence Takers.

Of course, I didn't know this at first. I went looking for the message board of a national radio station because I had heard something on the radio I wanted to know more about. I thought this might be a place where I would find like-minded people. I posted a few comments. Someone misinterpreted something I said. I tried to clarify. I was called uncultured and uneducated. I sighed and bowed out. Every now and then I look in on that message board. The same handful of people (maybe ten or fifteen regular contributors, no more) are still going at it, staggering around the ring, punch-drunk but unwilling to give up their stated (and indeed mis-stated) positions. This a radio station that averages ten million listeners, but with a message board dominated by a tiny number of people. Don't get me wrong, many people post perfectly sensible things on that board, but the common sense is drowned out by the baying and braying of the moaners and trolls.

I have a feeling that the general message board / forum will die a natural death as media outlets become more and more tailored to the individual. For now, though, I'm steering clear of Mumsnet. I parent the way I parent, and I'm not about to tell anyone else how to do it. And I'm a little scared I'll find out that I've been doing it all wrong. Ignorance is bliss (at least until the kids are all grown up and can sue me for the cost of their therapy).

(Note: When I do post on forums, I do it under my real name. It helps me think before I flame, and it means that anyone who has seen me on a forum can also find me here slagging off the forums. Oh well.)

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Jack

I went to the post office last week to send a parcel. Once the package had been weighed, measured and the value of its contents quantified, I handed over my money, got the stamps and expected to be on my way.
'Is that everything?' the man behind the counter asked.
'Yes,' I said, waiting for my change.
'Do you need to top up your mobile phone?'
'No.'
'Can I interest you in a personal loan?'
'No.'
'Open a National Savings account?'
At this point I said nothing, giving the ten pound note I had proffered an extra shove in his direction. He took the hint and gave me my change.

Yesterday, different post office, different staff. I'm sending off the Boy's passport application.
'Do you know we offer a "Check and Send" service for passport applications?' the lady says, eyeing up the envelope.
I smile and nod and put the envelope on the scales. 'Just the stamps please.'
'Can I interest you in a Post Office credit card?'
'No'
'Travel insurance? Currency exchange?'
'No.'
Silence. I'm not biting. Finally she hands over my change. I give her a breezy smile, but inside I am sighing.

There was a phrase my mother and teachers were fond of using: Jack of all trades, master of none. I wonder when this piece of folk wisdom went out of fashion.

Many years ago, before Children, when I worked as a researcher in arts and media, there was a lot of talk about 'convergence' in the media industries. I didn't really understand then what that meant but, some fifteen years later, I see it every day. I surf the web on my phone, I watch TV on my computer. With all the data coming down the phone line, it sort of makes sense for BT to want to sell me TV data, and Sky to sell me telephony.

But elsewhere in the marketplace, it's all gone a little mad. I get my pet insurance from the supermarket. British Gas fix my electrics. Blockbuster are going to start selling the TVs and DVD players we need to watch their movies (although what you are doing in Blockbuster if you haven't got a TV in the first place is beyond me).

What I really want is people who know what they are doing, know their product, and don't have to send me to a call centre to answer every question. I had a problem with our new Sky box a few weeks ago. I've learned by experience that their technical support staff are charming, eager, and clueless. I know what they are going to suggest before they say it, and I will invariably have tried it already. This time, I went online first, found a Sky user forum where my problem was discussed, found the solution, called Sky and asked them to implement the suggested solution. They refused, had to go through their checklist. We did the checklist - and thirty minutes later, still not fixed. Then they tried my way - two minutes later, ta da. Problem solved. Yet I bet the next person who calls in with the same problem will get no joy. They won't make a note of my solution - it doesn't appear on the list therefore it doesn't exist.

But the backlash has started. We have a new fishmonger on our high street. The guy who runs it is pleasant and knowledgable. He provides recipes according to the fish he has got in that day, and sells all the ingredients too, getting the neighbouring greengrocers to supply the veg. Give him enough notice and he'll get you whatever fish you want, and tell you how to cook it. Perfect. I want fish - he sells me fish. Job done.

If he ever tries to sell me car insurance, though, I shall despair.